Celebrating Chinese New Year

This week my students and I are celebrating Chinese New Year! This is such a fun topic to teach about. Several of my students come from Asian countries that celebrate the lunar new year so they are teaching us about how their families celebrate (China is not the only country to celebrate this holiday).

I have decorated the room with some decorations I picked up in Chinatown. I have also had my students help me make some decorations. Today we made paper lanterns to hang from the ceiling (directions can be found here). Tomorrow we plan to make strings of red paper firecrackers (directions can be found here).

My students love the new additions to our dramatic play center. I've added a bowl of oranges for luck, and of course all of the plates and bowls are red for good luck too. I've also added some felt dumplings, spring rolls, and broccoli that I made and some yarn noodles (I do not sew-you can totally make this felt food with hot glue-directions can be found here).

Later this week we will have a chopstick lesson and I will pass out red envelopes with a little treat inside. We will also try rice candy, fortune cookies, and almond cookies. Some years I get particularly ambitious and we cook up fried rice and drink tea for our little New Year's feast.

I've made two Chinese New Year games for my math centers. One is a count and match game and the other is an addition cover-up game. They practice numbers 1-12 and addition to 12. If you're interested in these freebies, you can download them here.

I hope you will consider celebrating Chinese New Year with your students. Even though the new year officially started today, the celebration traditionally lasts for 15 days, so you have plenty of time! I'll be back later this week with more pictures and some great book recommendations for studying Chinese New Year!